The Modernisation Paradigm – A Basic Theoretical Path for Explaining the Change of Poland’s Social Order after 1989

The aim of the article is to show the theoretical concepts explaining the system change in Poland after 1989, for which different varieties of the theory of modernisation are used. The classical theories of modernisation and neo-modernisation constitute the article’s theoretical basis and are applied to explain the system change. Explanations of the change are constructed around the theories’ premises, the currents they represent, as well as their manifested strengths and weaknesses. The discussion begins with a reminder of the origins of these theories, their attributes and the basic planes of relevance for explaining Polish transformations. The purpose of reviewing the premises is to build a theoretical framework for further analysis. However, the core of the article is the explanations of the system change used by Polish researchers based on the phenomenon of modernisation. The presented outline shows the specificity of Polish approaches to modernisation, demonstrating their different scope and character, the connections between them, the elements that make them different from one another and those that have not stood the test of time such as, for example: the concept of “imitative” modernisation. A significant part of the text is devoted to the presentation of the concepts of “modernisation through integration” and “Europeanisation”. The article concludes with a summary aimed at assessing the state of theoretical achievements relating to the theory of modernisation.